In praise of mom-and-pop ethnic restaurants

Ocean Palace hot and sour soup is the best we’ve tried.

Ethnic mom-and-pop restaurants are a treasure. I’m thinking of small places that have been in business for a while, so the proprietors have developed a well-oiled routine which is highly efficient but also entertaining to watch just because it is practiced and trimmed of all unnecessary actions.

Typically pop is in the back and mom is front-of-house. You are in direct contact with your source of dining pleasure, no intervening layers of chefs, line cooks and marketing strategies. And one more thing: at an ethnic mom-and-pop restaurant what you eat is what they give you. It may not be what you asked for but it’s what you deserve and need.

Yoshi lunch special early 2024.

I’m fortunate to have three examples within driving distance of Saratoga Springs for my daily lunch rotation. First up is Yoshi Sushi in Latham. Yoshi makes the sushi behind a counter; Mrs. Yoshi serves miso soup and tea and checks you out when done. Until recently Yoshi had a lunch special consisting of a couple pieces of nigiri, some assorted rolls, and random items made from whatever Yoshi had left over from the previous night. One time I was served mixed pickled things atop clam meat in a nori wrapper, another it was a perfect chunk of miso-marinated black cod. I decided this spring I would dine there every Friday lunch; since it’s the last day for the lunch special before the weekend Yoshi should have the widest palette of leftovers to work with. But they closed for a long vacation, and when Yoshi reopened it was dinner only. They’re both well into their 70s so I guess they deserve a break.

Combo meal at Bon Appetit. Cannot be finished by one person.

A few miles south is Bon Appetit, an Egyptian place improbably sited in a windowless bunker within a brutalist office tower on Wolf Rd in Colonie. This place came to our attention when our local food critic gave it a loving review. Most of the patrons are from the offices and order standard fare like egg sandwiches; if you go for the middle eastern menu they recognize a fan and will treat you as such. The portions are cheap and generous and usually come with an unannounced extra; one visit it was a clamshell of Koshari, a mac-and-cheese type thing that is “the national dish of Egypt”; another time I was offered a bowl of piping hot crusty chicken rice, straight from the oven, to savor while they prepared my order. The falafel are the best I have ever had and come with a side of babaganoush except they don’t; unless you preorder by 9:30 am you will get hummus instead. I learned my lesson and called ahead the next time and the creamy eggplant dip was well worth the extra effort.

On the other side of town, in a seamy Albany neighborhood near the Hudson River, Peter Chan plies his trade at Ocean Palace. Peter is a local institution who has owned multiple restaurants and to-go emporia; he has a habit of disappearing and then popping up somewhere else a few months later.

Front of Ocean Palace is a small room that was converted to a take-out window during the pandemic and only recently started serving sit-down meals. My routine is to order their lunch special, which includes the best hot and sour soup I have had, and enjoy it while a takeout order is prepared and I watch Mrs. Chan taking orders and tending to my table. (Since the pandemic, I have always been the only dine-in customer.) The menu is enormous and one wonders how a single chef can make all those dishes. The answer is that he doesn’t; you can expect reliable results if you stick to Chinese-American standards (my house special fried rice on a recent order was sublime, and came in a laughably overstuffed clamshell) but stray to more esoteric items and you will get what the chef decides to give you. The good news is it’s bound to be delicious. No complaints whatsoever.

Japanese omakase restaurants—in which the chef chooses what you will eat and usually charges a pretty penny for the service—have recently appeared in my remote provincial capital. (Demonstrating our provincialism, most of these places hedge their bets by publishing a menu in advance which seems like cheating to me.) But ethnic mom-and-pop restaurants are the OG omakase, at a much lower price point. Visit one of these establishments, or the equivalent where you live, and look forward to a meal which is a pleasure and perhaps a surprise.